Simon Trussell

Simon Trussell
Exposure control

The size of
the aperture and the brightness of the scene controls the amount of light that
enters the camera during a period of time, and the shutter controls the length
of time that the light hits the recording surface. Equivalent exposures can be
made with a larger aperture and a faster shutter speed or a corresponding
smaller aperture and with the shutter speed slowed down.

There are many
ongoing questions about different aspects of photography. In her writing "On
Photography" (1977), Susan Sontag discusses concerns about the objectivity of
photography. This is a highly debated subject within the photographic community.
Photographers decide what to take a photo of, what elements to exclude and what
angle to frame the photo. Along with the context that a photograph is received
in, photography is definitely a subjective form.

Modern photography has
raised a number of concerns on its impact on society. In Alfred Hitchcock's Rear
Window (1954), the camera is presented as a promoter of voyeuristic inhibitions.
'Although the camera is an observation station, the act of photographing is more
than passive observing'.

The Pentax K-x sits in the slot previously
occupied by the company's K200D - one of the best-specified entry-level DSLRs on
the market in its time - though that position has now been elevated by the
arrival of a new breed of simplified models below it. In Pentax's line-up that
means the K2000/K-m designed to entice compact camera users into DSLR ownership
with its easy-to-use interface and diminutive scale, and it's that camera the
K-x is immediately reminiscent of (they share the same body).

Despite
its compact size and use of AA batteries, there is more than a hint of the K-7
about the new model's specifications. It gains the K-7's 11-point AF system and
PRIME II imaging engine, along with its abilities to correct for chromatic
aberration and distortion when using Pentax DA and DFA lenses. It also features
an orientation sensor.

While, unlike the K-m, on the K-x you can now at
least select the active AF-point, it's still not displayed in the viewfinder.
However, despite of all the shared features with the K2000/K-m and K-7 there is
still plenty new about the K-x.

The camera is based around a 12.4
megapixel CMOS sensor with onboard A/D conversion (a system often associated
with Sony), with output fast enough not only for the camera to shoot at 4.7
frames per second, but also for capturing 24 frames of 720p HD video per second.
Along with the sensor come higher ISOs - now up to 6400, expandable to 12800.
Plus there's a revised version of the K-m's shutter mechanism to allow the high
continuous shooting speed, which ups the maximum shutter speed to 1/6000 sec.
The camera also features a new 'cross-processing' mode on top of an already
impressive range of filters and processing options.
Pentax K-x Key Features

* 12.4 megapixel APS-C-format CMOS sensor (total pixels: 12.9 million)

* PRIME II imaging engine
* 1/6000th maximum shutter speed
* 720p HD
video (24 fps)
* 2.7" LCD monitor (230,000 dots)
* Image sensor cleaning
(sensor shake)
* 11 selectable AF points
* IS0 200-6400 range
(100-12,800 when expanded)
* 4.7 frames per second continuous shooting (for
17 frames)

Color photography was explored beginning in the mid 1800s.
Early experiments in color could not fix the photograph and prevent the color
from fading. The first permanent color photo was taken in 1861 by the physicist
James Clerk Maxwell.

According to a survey made by Kodak in 2007, 75
percent of professional photographers say they will continue to use film, even
though some embrace digital.

According to the U.S. survey results, more
than two-thirds (68 percent) of professional photographers prefer the results of
film to those of digital for certain applications including:

* film’s
superiority in capturing more information on medium and large format films (48
percent);
* creating a traditional photographic look (48 percent);
*
capturing shadow and highlighting details (45 percent);
* the wide exposure
latitude of film (42 percent); and
* archival storage (38 percent)

Digital imaging has raised many ethical concerns because of the ease of
manipulating digital photographs in post processing. Many photojournalists have
declared they will not crop their pictures, or are forbidden from combining
elements of multiple photos to make "illustrations," passing them as real
photographs. Today's technology has made picture editing relatively simple for
even the novice photographer. However, recent changes of in-camera processing
allows digital fingerprinting of RAW photos to verify against tampering of
digital photos for forensics use.

Camera phones, combined with sites
like Flickr, have led to a new kind of social photography.

Simon Trussell

Nikon D3000 Key Features

* 10.75
megapixel DX-format CCD sensor (effective pixels: 10.2 million)
* 3" fixed
LCD monitor (230,000 dots)
* Image sensor cleaning (sensor shake and
'airflow')
* 11 AF points (with 3D tracking)
* IS0 100-1600 range
(100-3200 expanded)
* 3 frames per second continuous shooting (buffer: 6
raw, unlimited JPEG)
* Expeed image processing engine
* Extensive
in-camera retouching including raw development and straightening
* 72
thumbnail and calendar view in playback

Three years ago Leica
revealed the M8, its first digital rangefinder. The M8 looked similar to the
film M7 but was a completely new body, with a 27 x 18 mm (1.3x FOV crop) 10
megapixel Kodak CCD sensor and no resolution-sapping anti-alias filter. However
it wasn’t all plain sailing, all modern digital cameras feature a glass UV/IR
filter in front of the sensor, and in the case of the M8 the design was
particularly thin (just 0.5 mm) which turned out, in production, not to be
strong enough. We along with several other testers noted this issue, and soon
Leica were producing screw-on UV/IR filters for their lenses in order to
eliminate the effects of such spectral pollution.

In September 2008 came
a subtle update; the M8.2 was identical from a sensor and imaging sub-system
point of view but added a few new features; a quiet metal shutter, discrete
shutter re-cock, snapshot mode, sapphire crystal cover glass for the LCD and
most importantly the ‘stealthy’ black Leica dot.

Folding camera

The introduction of films enabled the existing designs for plate cameras
to be made much smaller and for the base-plate to be hinged so that it could be
folded up compressing the bellows. These designs were very compact and small
models were dubbed Vest pocket cameras.

CANON MARKS A DECADE OF
INNOVATION WITH 2,204
NEW PATENTS IN 2009

LAKE SUCCESS, N.Y.,
February 10, 2010 – Canon U.S.A., Inc., a leader in digital imaging, is proud to
announce that for the 10th consecutive year, Canon Inc. has ranked as one of the
top five corporate recipients of U.S. patents. Covering a broad spectrum of
digital imaging innovations, consumer product enhancements, and leading-edge
technology, Canon's commitment and investment in research and development
resulted in 2,204 patents in 2009, bringing the Company's total to nearly 20,000
patents in the last decade.

These patents have contributed to the
successful introduction of many innovative products and technologies currently
in the marketplace today. The EOS 5D Mark II Digital SLR camera, introduced
ground-breaking full High Definition video capability to the DSLR market, the
Canon imagePRESS C7000VP and imagePRESS C1+ digital printing presses delivered
extraordinary quality and productivity to the production and graphic arts
markets, and the CXDI-50RF Dynamic and Static Digital Radiography (DR) Sensor,
was the world's first portable dynamic and static sensor, capable of viewing
both dynamic images and capturing static X-ray images.

"Since our
inception, Canon has put enormous emphasis on building a legacy of innovation
and growth, which is sustained by our commitment to research and development"
said Seymour Liebman, executive vice president, chief administrative officer
& general counsel, Canon U.S.A. "This commitment allows us to continually
enhance our current products, and develop advanced new technologies that allow
us to venture into new areas of the marketplace to better serve consumer needs."

Further demonstrating Canon's commitment to research and innovation, the
Company announced as part of its $640 million expansion of Canon Virginia, Inc.,
that it will establish a center for the research and development of automated
and robotic manufacturing technologies for the Americas region and will expand
cartridge production and recycling, as well as reclaiming of toner cartridges.

All photography was originally monochrome, or black-and-white. Even
after color film was readily available, black-and-white photography continued to
dominate for decades, due to its lower cost and its "classic" photographic look.
It is important to note that some monochromatic pictures are not always pure
blacks and whites, but also contain other hues depending on the process. The
cyanotype process produces an image of blue and white for example. The albumen
process, first used more than 150 years ago, produces brown tones.

Many
photographers continue to produce some monochrome images. Some full color
digital images are processed using a variety of techniques to create black and
whites, and some manufacturers produce digital cameras that exclusively shoot
monochrome.

Simon Trussell The first permanent photograph was made in
1826 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce using a sliding wooden box camera made by
Charles and Vincent Chevalier in Paris. Niépce built on a discovery by Johann
Heinrich Schultz (1724): a silver and chalk mixture darkens under exposure to
light. However, while this was the birth of photography, the camera itself can
be traced back much further. Before the invention of photography, there was no
way to preserve the images produced by these cameras apart from manually tracing
them.

The development of the collodion wet plate process by Frederick
Scott Archer in 1850 cut exposure times dramatically, but required photographers
to prepare and develop their glass plates on the spot, usually in a mobile
darkroom. Despite their complexity, the wet-plate ambrotype and tintype
processes were in widespread use in the latter half of the 19th century. Wet
plate cameras were little different from previous designs, though there were
some models, such as the sophisticated Dubroni of 1864, where the sensitizing
and developing of the plates could be carried out inside the camera itself
rather than in a separate darkroom. Other cameras were fitted with multiple
lenses for making cartes de visite. It was during the wet plate era that the use
of bellows for focusing became widespread.

The first colour photograph
was made by Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, with the help of English
inventor and photographer Thomas Sutton, in 1861

The electronic video
camera tube was invented in the 1920s, starting a line of development that
eventually resulted in digital cameras, which largely supplanted film cameras
after the turn of the 21st century.

Exposure and rendering

Camera controls are inter-related. The total amount of light reaching
the film plane (the "exposure") changes with the duration of exposure, aperture
of the lens, and on the effective focal length of the lens (which in variable
focal length lenses, can force a change in aperture as the lens is zoomed).
Changing any of these controls can alter the exposure. Many cameras may be set
to adjust most or all of these controls automatically. This automatic
functionality is useful for occasional photographers in many situations.

The duration of an exposure is referred to as shutter speed, often even
in cameras that don't have a physical shutter, and is typically measured in
fractions of a second. Aperture is expressed by an f-number or f-stop (derived
from focal ratio), which is proportional to the ratio of the focal length to the
diameter of the aperture. If the f-number is decreased by a factor of \sqrt 2,
the aperture diameter is increased by the same factor, and its area is increased
by a factor of 2. The f-stops that might be found on a typical lens include 2.8,
4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22, 32, where going up "one stop" (using lower f-stop
numbers) doubles the amount of light reaching the film, and stopping down one
stop halves the amount of light.

Traditional cameras capture light onto
photographic film or photographic plate. Video and digital cameras use
electronics, usually a charge coupled device (CCD) or sometimes a CMOS sensor to
capture images which can be transferred or stored in tape or computer memory
inside the camera for later playback or processing.

Cameras that capture
many images in sequence are known as movie cameras or as ciné cameras in Europe;
those designed for single images are still cameras. However these categories
overlap. As still cameras are often used to capture moving images in special
effects work and modern digital cameras are often able to trivially switch
between still and motion recording modes. A video camera is a category of movie
camera that captures images electronically (either using analogue or digital
technology).

The market for photographic services demonstrates the
aphorism "A picture is worth a thousand words", which has an interesting basis
in the history of photography. Magazines and newspapers, companies putting up
Web sites, advertising agencies and other groups pay for photography.

Many people take photographs for self-fulfillment or for commercial
purposes. Organizations with a budget and a need for photography have several
options: they can employ a photographer directly, organize a public competition,
or obtain rights to stock photographs. Photo stock can be procured through
traditional stock giants, such as Getty Images or Corbis; smaller microstock
agencies, such as Fotolia; or web marketplaces, such as Cutcaster.

Nikon
has released a firmware update for the D3S professional DSLR that fixes a series
of bugs. Firmware v1.01 rectifies errors pertaining to movie recording, exposure
preview, live view and the 'CHA' error message displayed while using some CF
cards. It also revises the simplified Chinese menu. The firmware is available
for immediate download from Nikon's website.

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Simon Trussell or Simon Trussell